Semua Bab Three Brothers and Mate’s Regret After I Left: Bab 1 - Bab 9

I didn't hesitate for a second. I tilted my head back and drank every last drop.[Wolfsbane has entered the bloodstream. Self-healing permanently disabled. Countdown to death: seven days.]It was late at night by the time Kyle returned. The attendants had unchained me from the judgment pillar and dumped me back in the bedroom tucked into the farthest corner of the main house. The wounds from the silver chains were still seeping blood, and my chest felt as though something were slowly tearing it apart from the inside. The door swung open, and Kyle walked in with the cold of the snow clinging to him.He had changed into a brand-new dark gray overcoat, its collar carrying the distinctive fir fragrance sold at Redstone's spice shop. Leah loved the scent. He used to find it too sweet, but now he had grown used to wearing it. He walked to the bedside and set a paper box on the table."Honey berry pie from Redstone. It's your birthday too, after all."He glanced at the blood-soaked gauze on m

There was no concern in his voice, only the same reproach I'd heard too many times. The pressure in my chest finally broke loose, and I retched up a pool of dark, almost black blood. Victor scoffed. "Playing dead again. She'll stoop to anything for sympathy. How long are you going to keep this up?"Kyle walked over and pressed his fingertips to my pulse, then sent his spiritual energy probing into my wolf spirit. The System was still masking the death creeping through me. He quickly withdrew his hand, his tone certain and cold."You're overwrought, and it's destabilizing your wolf spirit. If you'd just give in to Leah, would you have to suffer like this?"He looked at me, a trace of contempt in his eyes, the kind that came from believing he had me all figured out."Erin, the things you'll do to steal my attention from Leah keep getting uglier."Darian lifted Leah into his arms and turned to leave."Kyle, this lunatic is your problem. Leah's been frightened. I'm taking her back to rest.

I hovered in midair. North Mountain was freezing, the wind and snow cutting through the forest like blades. But I could no longer feel the cold or the pain.I looked down at the body that had been mine. It lay still in Kyle's arms, black blood seeping endlessly from the corner of its mouth and staining the white snow dark and ugly. Leah hid behind Kyle, covering her nose in disgust."Kyle, her blood smells awful. We've delivered the amulet, so let's head back. I want to go check out the new earrings in Redstone."Kyle didn't move. He stared at the black blood on the snow, his brow drawn tight, as though he were waiting for me to open my eyes and mock him for falling for a trick."Erin, get up."The usual command still sharpened his voice."It's cold in the snow. Stop this."My body didn't move. As if Kyle's command had reminded him, Darian stepped forward and kicked my shin."Who do you think you're fooling? Get up."He put real force into the kick. My body rolled half a turn across th

I drifted into the study and watched Victor read the statement over and over. It had been written by Nora Bell, the maid Leah had once trusted most. Before leaving Silver Ridge, Nora had written everything down.Leah had never suffered from a weak wolf spirit at all. Every time she suddenly couldn't breathe, she had taken a scent suppressant from the black market beforehand, then pricked her chest with a silver needle to make her pulse and aura erratic. She knew that my three brothers and Kyle feared for her safety above all else, so whenever I received even the slightest attention, she immediately had an "episode."She had stolen everything with the same trick: the welcome banquet after I returned to Silver Ridge, the coming-of-age celebration Kyle had prepared for me, the clan-mark necklace our mother had left me, even the birthday celebration that should have been mine the day before. The statement ended with one final revelation. Leah had known all along that Kyle had written wolfs

Silver Ridge Pack's main house was draped in black. The crimson silk ribbons hung for the full-moon mating ceremony hadn't been taken down. Now they remained amid black mourning candles, garish and absurd. I lay in a black coffin, dressed in the crimson gown Kyle had chosen himself.In the end, Kyle didn't mark my body. Elias had told him that a mate mark belonged to two people who chose each other freely. It was not proof of one person's claim over another. Kyle sat beside the coffin for three full days.He had taken off the white healer's robe that symbolized his status as Moon Valley's heir and wore only plain black, his eyes vacant, stripped of every trace of the brilliant healer's pride. Victor removed his pack council badge and fed the statement and every punishment order he had signed into the fire, one by one. But burning the papers to ash couldn't erase the truth: he was the one who had ordered me to kneel on broken ceramic.Ryan knelt before the coffin, his right hand wrapped